Table of Contents

Experiment to Enhance the Reporting of Drug Use by Arrestees in Cleveland, Detroit, and Houston, 1997 (ICPSR 2890)

Principal Investigator(s):Wish, Eric D.,, University of Maryland, College Park, Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR); Gray, Thomas, University of Maryland, College Park, Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR); Sushinsky, Jonathan, University of Maryland, College Park, Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR)

Summary:

This project involved an experiment conducted in three Drug
Use Forecasting (DUF) [DRUG USE FORECASTING IN 24 CITIES IN THE UNITED
STATES, 1987-1997 (ICPSR 9477)] program sites to determine whether
using a more detailed informed consent procedure and/or altering the
sequence of the interview and urine specimen collection could enhance
the validity of arrestees' self-reports of drug use without adversely
affecting study response rates. A 2x2 factorial design was used to
assess the eff... (more info)

This project involved an experiment conducted in three Drug
Use Forecasting (DUF) [DRUG USE FORECASTING IN 24 CITIES IN THE UNITED
STATES, 1987-1997 (ICPSR 9477)] program sites to determine whether
using a more detailed informed consent procedure and/or altering the
sequence of the interview and urine specimen collection could enhance
the validity of arrestees' self-reports of drug use without adversely
affecting study response rates. A 2x2 factorial design was used to
assess the effects of the two manipulations. The first two
experimental conditions involved administering either the standard DUF
informed consent or an enhanced consent that told the arrestees more
about the confidential nature of the research and the capabilities of
urinalysis. The second two conditions involved collecting the urine
specimen either before or after the interview was administered. The
experiment included 2,015 adult arrestees from Cleveland, Ohio,
Detroit, Michigan, and Houston, Texas, who were randomly assigned to
one of the four experimental conditions. The experiment was designed
so that the only variability across the interviews was the
manipulation of informed consent and the sequencing of the urine
specimen request. All other procedures of a standard DUF collection
were followed. Data were collected in Cleveland between July 8 and
August 22, 1997, in Detroit from August 4 to September 27, 1997, and
in Houston from October 17 to November 1, 1997. Variables specific to
this project include the experimental condition to which the
respondent was assigned, follow-up questions asking whether the
arrestee would have responded differently if assigned to the other
conditions, and several dummy variables on length and type of drug
use. Data from the DUF interview provided detailed information about
each arrestee's self-reported use of 15 drugs. For each drug type,
arrestees were asked whether they had ever used the drug, the age at
which they first used the drug, whether they had used the drug within
the past three days, how many days they had used the drug within the
past month, whether they had ever needed or felt dependent on the
drug, and whether they were dependent on the drug at the time of the
interview. Data from the DUF interview instrument also included
alcohol/drug treatment history, information about whether arrestees
had ever injected drugs, and whether they were influenced by drugs
when the crime that they were charged with was committed. The data
also include information about whether the arrestee had been to an
emergency room for drug-related incidents and whether he or she had
had prior arrests in the past 12 months. Urine tests screened for the
presence of ten drugs, including marijuana, opiates, cocaine, PCP,
methadone, benzodiazepines (Valium), methaqualone, propoxyphene
(Darvon), barbiturates, and amphetamines (positive test results for
amphetamines were confirmed by gas chromatography). Demographic data
include the age, race, sex, educational attainment, marital status,
employment status, and living circumstances of each respondent.

Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Dataset(s)

Study Description

Citation

Wish, Eric D., Thomas Gray, and Jonathan Sushinsky. EXPERIMENT TO ENHANCE THE REPORTING OF DRUG USE BY ARRESTEES IN CLEVELAND, DETROIT, AND HOUSTON, 1997. ICPSR version. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR) [producer], 2000. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2001. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02890.v1

(1) Users are encouraged to review the documentation
for the 1997 DUF data collection for the methodology and sampling used
for the standard DUF interview protocol. (2) The user guide and the
codebook and data collection instruments are provided by ICPSR as
Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF file format was
developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF
reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how
to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.

Methodology

Study Purpose:
Findings from the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF)
Program [DRUG USE FORECASTING IN 24 CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES,
1987-1997 (ICPSR 9477)] indicate that many arrestees underreport
their recent use of illicit drugs in spite of the many attempts to
convince arrestees that their responses are part of a confidential and
anonymous research study and cannot affect their cases. If arrestees
fail to report drug use accurately in research interviews, and if the
level of underreporting varies from one research site to another, then
the accuracy and comparability of self-reported drug use data are
suspect. This project involved an experiment conducted in three DUF
sites to determine whether using a more detailed informed consent
procedure and/or altering the sequence of the interview and urine
specimen collection could enhance the validity of arrestees'
self-reports of drug use, without adversely affecting study response
rates. Further, results from the experiment had potential implications
for procedures used in the DUF program's successor, the Arrestee Drug
Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program.

Study Design:
A 2x2 factorial design was used to assess the
effects of the two manipulations. The first two experimental
conditions involved administering either the standard DUF informed
consent or an enhanced consent that told the arrestees more about the
confidential nature of the research and the capabilities of
urinalysis. The second two conditions involved collecting the urine
specimen either before or after the interview was administered. The
experiment included 2,015 adult arrestees from Cleveland, Detroit, and
Houston who were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental
cells. Cell A represented the typical DUF protocol in which
interviewers administered the standard consent and requested the urine
specimen after the interview had been completed. In Cell B,
researchers also administered the standard consent, but asked for the
specimen prior to conducting the interview. Cells C and D used the
enhanced informed consent and asked for the specimen after or before
the interview, respectively. Data collection was divided into two
phases. During the first phase, arrestees were randomly assigned to
Cells A or C, both of which required the collection of the specimen
after the interview. After Phase I was completed, collection began for
Cells B and D, where the urine specimen was collected before the
interview. Four scripts were prepared representing the four
experimental conditions. A single script was used for each arrestee
approached, which automatically assigned the arrestee to one of the
four cells. To randomize the two scripts for each phase, they were
first photocopied so that the scripts alternated. The sheets were then
broken into smaller stacks and shuffled by picking up varying numbers
of sheets from each stack and merging them together. The shuffling
step was then repeated several times. The scripts were constructed so
that each guided the interviewer through the sequence of steps to be
taken for the experimental condition assigned to the arrestee being
interviewed. The experiment was designed so that the only variability
across the interviews was the manipulation of informed consent and
sequence of requesting the urine specimen. All other procedures of a
standard DUF collection were followed. The DUF data processing
contractor merged the interview data and urine test results and
forwarded the merged data file to Center for Substance Abuse Research
(CESAR) staff. CESAR staff constructed the final analysis file by
merging the data file from the DUF contractor with the CESAR data
containing variables denoting the cells to which the arrestee had been
assigned and responses to additional questions about the experiment
recorded on the script sheet. Data were collected in Cleveland between
July 8 and August 22, 1997, in Detroit from August 4 to September 27,
1997, and in Houston from October 17 to November 1, 1997.

Sample:
Sites were chosen to represent different interviewing
conditions and to fit with the experiment's data collection schedule.

Data Source:

personal interviews, urine specimens, and arrest
records

Description of Variables:
Variables specific to this project include the
experimental condition to which the arrestee was assigned, follow-up
questions asking whether the arrestee would have responded differently
if assigned to the other conditions, and several dummy variables on
length and type of drug use. Data from the DUF interview provided
detailed information about each arrestee's self-reported use of 15
drugs. For each drug type, arrestees were asked whether they had ever
used the drug, the age at which they first used the drug, whether they
had used the drug within the past three days, how many days they had
used the drug within the past month, whether they had ever needed or
felt dependent on the drug, and whether they were dependent on the
drug at the time of the interview. Data from the DUF interview
instrument also included alcohol/drug treatment history, information
about whether arrestees had ever injected drugs, and whether they were
influenced by drugs when the crime that they were charged with was
committed. The data also include information about whether the
arrestee had been to an emergency room for drug-related incidents and
whether he or she had had prior arrests in the past 12 months. Urine
tests screened for the presence of ten drugs, including marijuana,
opiates, cocaine, PCP, methadone, benzodiazepines (Valium),
methaqualone, propoxyphene (Darvon), barbiturates, and amphetamines
(positive test results for amphetamines were confirmed by gas
chromatography). Demographic data include the age, race, sex,
educational attainment, marital status, employment status, and living
circumstances of each respondent.

Response Rates:
There were no differences in the interview or
urine specimen response rates across the four conditions. Between 80
and 85 percent of all arrestees approached agreed to be interviewed
and between 88 and 92 percent of the participants in the four
conditions provided a urine specimen.

Presence of Common Scales:
None.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: